Iga Swiatek dominated through the North American hard court season last year winning the Sunshine double in
Indian Wells and Miami without any issues.
The Polish player was impressive last year through the majority of the year but this year presents a new challenge. She earned plenty of points last year advancing to number one on the rankings. This year will be much tougher for her as she's expected to defend all of those points in order to remain the number one player in the world.
The Sunshine double alone is worth 2000 points and she'll have to defend them on top of
Roland Garros that is later in the year. She will also defend plenty of points before those events. The first event is Doha where she earned 900 points. Then we have Dubai where she won 55 points so she'll defend nearly 1000 points before the Sunshine double.
Then comes the Sunshine double with 1000 points in Indian Wells and 1000 points in Miami with the Roland Garros coming up. If she stumbles in those events we could see a change at the top of the rankings. Sabalenka and other players are looking really strong and things change quickly in WTA tennis.